


Ramen

by Trekkele



Series: A Townie, A Linguist, And Several Kinds Of Tea. [13]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Family, Fluff, Food, Gen, Jim has food issues but theyre subtle here, featuring Gaila, return of the snark siblings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 13:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20761109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trekkele/pseuds/Trekkele
Summary: Gaila brings Jim over to study. Uhura is making ramen.





	Ramen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeautyGraceOuterSpace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautyGraceOuterSpace/gifts).

> Happy Birthday Mx Grace! Your prompts always get me writing, and its a pleasure to have you on my dash, here's to another year of Star Trek and fluff! Or, angst, since you seem to prefer that XD.  
Had this in my drafts for a really long time, but some encouragement and some free time (for the first time in weeks!) finally got it finished, just in time for your birthday, which was cool. Many happy returns!

No matter how many times they take it apart, the door creaks. She’d tried complaining to her sisters, who between them should have the technical ability to fix a squeaky door, for the love of Goddess, but they had just laughed and told her it was part of the dorm life charm. What charm?

At least, Uhura supposes, it works as a sort of doorbell. She’s julienning the last of the carrots, and pauses to check the cabinet for more ramen packs. If she remembers correctly, there should be enough vegetables left in the fresher to boost the soup.

She’d learned to recognize Jim’s steady, bouncing footsteps pretty early on. Gaila never really brought anyone else to their dorm room, and Jim had a distinctive way of following people around.

Besides, she can hear Gaila rambling about someone(? Something? Pronouns in low orion are way more complicated) in orion again, and the only other person she knows who speaks that dialect is Kirk.

Well, less speaks it and more ‘can follow Gaila in a conversation’, but it’s close enough. She can hear Gaila throw something onto the couch, followed by two thumps as her boots hit the far wall. She hasn’t quite gotten used to the standard footwear at the academy, but still refuses to ask for a substitute.

Orions don’t really do formal footwear, preferring the thin decorative chains they wrap around their ankles and wrists. Gaila has a number of them she wears on special occasions, even lending one to Uhura for a baby naming ceremony they’d been invited too.

She had noticed that Jim had a cartoon like curiosity when it came to kitchens, gravitating to the small area while subtly scanning the countertop with bright eyes.

He was halfway through chopping an onion before she realized what he was doing. She had always hated cutting onions, being more sensitive than her sisters and in general finding herself sobbing after the first few slices.

‘Better cry over an onion then over a sadness, Nyota’ her mother used to say, rubbing circles on her back.

Jim didn’t seem to have that problem, although Uhura could feel her eyes tearing up just from being close.

“So what are you guys cooking?” Jim asked, sliding neatly to the right as Gaila wiggled by. He did that sometimes, put a little verbal barrier between himself and the other people in the room, separated himself like his presence was an intrusion.

She had started hating it around the same time she noticed it.

Gaila turned on some music, some 21st century ear candy that Leonard, of all people, had introduced her to.

“We,” she said, deliberate and casual, ignoring the blank confusion that slid on and off Jim’s face in an instant, “are going to be having ramen.”

Gaila started piling the extra veggies onto the counter from the ‘fresher. “It’s yummy, and spicy, and Uhura always makes extra, even though she makes less every time. It’s like it's impossible to make less than three portions.”

She bopped along to the music, twirling the old french over her tongue and gracefully two-stepping past the table they’d scavenged from the old theater building.

Uhura nodded, annoyed because that the song would be stuck in her head for the next three days at least, but glad Gaila never listened to Gary’s music suggestions. ABBA wasn't the worst thing to be stuck listening too.

“It’s true, we always end up eating it cold for lunch the next day. No matter how much adjust the recipe…” she shrugged, and Gaila and Jim both dramatically jumped at the knife she was holding.

“Don’t point that thing at me, Uhura, you can just tell me to leave!” He was teasing, but as always there just enough sincerely buried in the words, just enough of the self doubt that she had noticed creeping in.

It was weird, how at one point she’d assumed all that confidence was real.

But he spent so much time projecting that cool, self assured know it all, that she couldn’t figure out how to tell him it was ok. That he could drop the mask like he sometimes did, for the briefest moments between laughing, or ranting or pulling some ridiculou story out of an ion storm just to make someone smile. All she could do was what she had been, which seemed to be just letting him exist.

So she rolled her eyes, poking the knife in his general direction with a narrowed glare and a tiny smile she knew he noticed. “Just finish those onions, farm boy.”

He grinned at her, tongue poking out of the edge, and started singing along with Gaila. “No problem Jessica!”

“Nope,” Uhura popped the ‘p’ with a smirk, laughing at his pout and letting the two of their voices drown out the old speakers.

* * *

There’s a pile of vegetables at the back of the counter, waiting for the onions and mushrooms to finish sautéing. Jim perched on the rickety stool in the corner, the one with the sticky leg that never seems to behave for anyone but him.

“I didn’t know you could cook.” Jim is watching Gaila sneak sugar snap peas with a weird look on his face. Her dad used to wear that face when she would stay home sick and eat nothing but ice cream sandwiches.

The rest of the vegetables went in, along with the water she had been boiling.

Gaila kept shoving a few in his direction, till he had a little pile he tipped back in her bowl when she wasn’t looking.

He looked at her with wide eyed guilt when he caught her watching and shrugged awkwardly, making the kind of face a toddler would when handed plomeek mash. Uhura had seen him eat a whole bag of those once.

Jim shifted, hands twisting into the stiff red of his uniform pants.

“First thing my sister taught me to make before I left home. Mac’n cheese and red sauce after that.” She tasted the soup, adding the three spices her sister swore were god's gift to ramen and the two she thought were more necessary than those.

Jim was quiet, tilting the stool from side to side, wiggling in place. He gets like that sometimes, usually with Len from what she can tell, like there’s something he wants to say but can’t figure out _why_, and _how_, and the words get tangled in all the things she doesn’t know about him.

She ignores it, tasting the broth again and munching on a carrot. It’s almost done. Jim opens his mouth, snaps it closed, and then starts again.

“My brother tried teaching me to bake once.” It’s measured, every word, and she turns it over in her mind while he breathes, wondering why it feels like he’s giving her something important.

“I didn’t know you had a brother.” Uhura said, Gaila nodding along with a snap pea half in her mouth.

Jim’s grin turns sharp, “That’s right, no one knows about George Kirks first born. Weird, that fact, since he’s the good one.”

Uhura's shoulders tense, slightly, because Kirk never brought that up. It was always the professors, or cadets, or the guest lecturers, but she had gotten the impression that if Jim had his way, he wouldn’t have ever mentioned his father.

His mother, on the other hand, he couldn’t shut up about. It was adorable.

“He _tried_ to teach you to bake?” She smirked, one eyebrow crooked and mocking. Jim didn’t need her to acknowledge his fucked up birthday right now, not if the fabric he was twisting between his hands again meant anything.

Jim grinned back, years of his father's shadow sliding off his back when she ignored the other, obvious questions. “Yeah, it was great! We made m&m brownies, and he freaked out because I didn't level out the flour and sugar and stuff, just kinda...eyeballed it. Sam was so mad when mine tasted better than his.” He leaned back, looking younger than he usually did.

“We made chocolate chip cookies the next time. And then strawberry shortcake. His kitchen never really recovered, but Aurie didn’t care as long as we cleaned up and let her eat most of it.”

Gaila shoved another bean at him, lighting up when he absently put it in his mouth. Orions where weird about food for a number of reasons, mostly the cultural significance that hovered around sharing it, but Jim...Jim was just weird about it. At least, from what she knows.

Uhura has no doubts about how little she really knows about why Jim is Jim.

“Leveled off his flour? That seems awfully careful for a Kirk.” She smirks at him, laughing at how his chest puffs up and his eyes fill with pride.

“Yeah he’s a research scientist, he gets really precise with measurements and stuff.”

Kirk spoke about Sam the way Gaila spoke about Kai and Uhura and her sisters spoke about their baby brother. Like it was obvious how amazing they are and everyone should know it. Clearly Jim was proud of him.

Uhura wondered how Sam felt about Jim.

* * *

The ramen, steaming from the three bowls at the table, paused any conversation they could be having in favour of happy slurping noises and the occasional yelp as it went down hot.

Jim, only halfway done and licking his lips, leaned back and closed his eyes. “Uhura, I am exceedingly whelmed by this soup.”

She blinked.”That's not a word.”

Kirk cracked open one eye, lazy blue and eyebrows raised. “Yes it is.”

“Ok, technically,” she leaned forward, “I mean, yeah, it is, but not really?” Gaila watched them through the corner of her eye, slurping noodles and sneaking more green beans from the center of the table. “Like, what would it mean? It's just a cut off version of ‘overwhelmed’, not a new individual word.”

Jim blinked lazily, swirling a noodle around the chopsticks he’d gotten the replicator to spit out. “It means you have met every single one of my expectations, despite no prior indication that you would.” Jim took another spoon, before saying. “Except not really because your fucking amazing at everything you do. So it would mean -” He frowns, eyeing the beans Gaila keeps sneaking into his plate.

“It means I want to eat this for the rest of my life.”

Uhura giggles, which is annoying because she has a spoonful of soup halfway to her mouth and her hand shakes, “That’s a very specific meaning for a single word though.”

Jim shrugs, reaching for the iced tea Gaila had made. It was the first time he had taken some food on his own. “Andorians have a word for when hail interrupts a wedding by knocking the groom out, overly specific words have a time honored position in this fine galaxy of ours.”

“I appreciate that the galaxy is our personal property now,” Gaila reaches past Jim, grinning at his huff of protest when she drops even more pastrami into his bowl and takes the remaining slice for herself.

Jim smiles at her, a little sharper then he usually does, “Oh no, the galaxy is yours,” he says, “ Between the two of you, I don’t think anyone would doubt that. I’m just here for the ride.” He takes another bite, a little more at ease with every spoon. “And the ramen, apparently.”

* * *

There’s a medium sized container of m&m brownies outside their door the next morning, along with two cups of coffee (perfectly made, with the exact amounts of milk and sugar they usually take) and note written on the lid, with a doodled cadet holding a bowl with two chopsticks sticking out of it.

‘Thanks for the food ;D’

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! here's hoping all my WIPS get back on track, not just the fluffy one shots.


End file.
